up comes an insrcutable, reasonably manageble list that makes for charmingly surreal exploration. bad lyrics next to athlete interviews next to newspaper articles from india, next to whatever the fuck this is.

i went to the tin donut store and i picked up half a dozen. kudos as always to the mighty reckless records. the knee-jerk reactions:

the books: thought for food wherein acoustic guitars, strings and samples churn out of a laptop creating an incredibly odd and unexpectedly emotional envelope. the voice clips interwoven with the instruments have the great quality of not being heard as pieces that came from somewhere, but rather as pieces that send you somewhere. the impeccable editing work pulls you along a trail of succinct encounters that somehow each make their own cadence and create genuinely moving moments from quite unlikely sources such as golf applause. thank you wnur for spinning this at 3 am a few weeks ago. great and inspiringly original work from a couple of obscure guys out of nyc and north carolina.

terre thaemlitz: replicas rubato wherein the works of gary numan are reinterpereted in solo piano swathed in continent-sized reverb. numan’s singular ability to write rich pop in classical colors is very well investiagted on this disc by thaemlitz. stripping away the analog synths of down in the park, stormtrooper in drag and praying to the aliens and taking liberties with the melodic figures and arrangements in well-considered ways, s/he (thaemlitz is transgendered) does an excellent job re-illustrating numan’s tense solemnity. the only thing i wish was different on this disc is the mastering; the playing encompasses a very wide dynamic range that is made a bit jarring by the use of the enormo-reverbs. next time, call dan stout. (side note: i have been making a series of mix cds for handing out to friends named the DSL years and one odd feature of this series is that each volume so far has a version of numan’s down in the park . volume III now has its keystone track thanks to thaemlitz.)

sterling: s/t wherein, according to the store tag on the disc, sterling are a chicago instrumental band into ennio morricone and grinding noise a’ la savage republic (sav rep? now there‘s a name i haven’t heard since the reagan administration). something about this disc makes me think the morricone tag was thrown on for no reason other than one of the guitars is sproingy and sproings itself sproingily atop troubling, ominous rumbles made by the rythm section, approximating some of the combinations found in morricone’s most famous work for sergio leone’s western films. but that’s about where the comparison ends. some excitingly taut guitar work and mildly mathy/progish drumming work together with great piano figures to produce passages, (if not songs) one can get nicely lost within. very interested in seeing these guys live; may do that tomorrow night at the fireside.